It’s been a long, long time — if ever — since Ontario has seen the kind of knock-down, drag-out byelection spectacle we’re going to be treated to in the riding of Kitchener-Waterloo this fall.

Usually, provincial byelections are sleepy little localized affairs. Most barely impinge upon the consciousness of the riding in question, much less warrant attention elsewhere in the province.

Not this time. Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals are clinging to power with a minority, courtesy of sometimes sullen support from the New Democrats.

They were one seat short of a bare majority until Tuesday, when the retirement of veteran Liberal MPP Greg Sorbara put them two seats behind.

The rules say the first byelection must be called no later than Oct. 24, and held no later than Nov. 22. Some expect McGuinty to call both shortly after labour day, but there are many potential outcomes at this point, even up to a full general election.

Since McGuinty and the Liberals have so much riding on the outcome they could even hold the byelections separately, to hedge their bets. That would be highly unusual, although not illegal. But desperate people do desperate things.

The McGuinty government is looking like a shaky regime these days. Their scandal list is ballooning, the teachers’ and doctors’ unions are all mad at him, school strikes loom and the Progressive Conservatives are trying to recruit volunteers from across the province to join the first byelection fight.

In other words, we can expect an all-out political brawl in Kitchener-Waterloo, perhaps one resembling the union-versus-Republican recall fight that convulsed Wisconsin this spring. The unions lost there, big time.

You’re not going to get any predictions from me which way the fight is going to go in either byelection. With so much at stake, too many variables and potentially disruptive dirty tricks loom.

But the history is, Sorbara’s seat is seen as a safe Liberal seat, and K-W was a safe Tory seat under former teacher Elizabeth Witmer dating back to 1999. At age 65 she retired from politics — or was lured away, depending on your point of view — by McGuinty to ascend to the richly-rewarded chair of the Worker’s Safety and Insurance Board.

As the WSIB’s first full-time chair, Witmer will be paid $188,000 and enjoy a chauffeur — probably one of the reasons she made the jump, envious Tories mutter.

If the Liberals hold Sorbara’s seat and win K-W, they won’t have to go cap in hand to NDP leader Andrea Horwath any more to get bills passed in the legislature.

Winning Witmer’s seat would allow the Liberals to return to the carefree days when they could simply cancel gas power projects at will, without regard to cost, and throw up hundreds of wind turbines in defiance of local planning just to impress school children.

If the Liberals lose even one of the byelections their tenuous minority hold on power would almost certainly be broken within the next 12 months, sending the entire province trudging to the polls.

That’s what the NDP want, and that’s what the Progressive Conservatives want — and that’s what a whole bunch of one-issue pressure groups like the anti-turbine protesters want.

So all the signs indicate both Opposition parties and a ton of other groups are preparing to throw everything they have at Kitchener-Waterloo.

Tim Hudak’s PC’s certainly appear to be readying for a Wisconsin-style showdown. Party president Richard Ciano sent out a fundraising letter this week encouraging volunteers from across the province to converge on K-W when called, as foot soldiers.

Witmer won the riding comfortably last time with 21,665 votes, but the Liberals were hot on her tail with 17,837 votes for lawyer Eric Davis. The NDP were in a distant third place with 8,250 votes for actor-activist Isabel Cisterna.

This time the Tories are putting up university business instructor Tracey Weiler to try to hold the seat for the party. The Liberals say they reveal name their candidate on Aug. 6. The NDP are running local school board chair Catherine Fife, who is already campaigning door-to-door.

Both the Tories and the NDP have plenty to work with in this contest. The McGuinty government is looking confused and inept as more of its policies unravel and more of its questionable decision-making and appointments are exposed as stinkers.

There is the growing noise over the purely political cancellation of two natural gas power generation plants in the Toronto area. The Liberals admit they blew at least $490 million by cancelling the plants to quiet neighbourhood opponents — one of them just days before the 2011 election.

Ontario’s debt continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and the economy isn’t recovering as well here as it has in the rest of the country.

But we weren’t doing any better last fall when voters put McGuinty back in Queen’s Park. So it’s anybody’s guess where these two byelections are headed.

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